Gorgeously ornamented cakes, or
curious implements for games, totally unknown to us moderns! Our host
has a pleasant greeting for all, and receives cordial reply, and
sometimes merry jest and repartee from the happy revelers.
Much to our delight, our route to the station passes the grounds where
the fête is held; and here we see booths of boughs, a revolving swing
(which they call a "galance"), fluttering flags, and gay banners.
Merry groups of young people are engaged in games or dances, while the
elders are gossiping, or look on approvingly, and the air is filled with
lively music. Can it be that the melodies which we hear are the famous
old ones, "Toes les Bourgeois de Charters" and "Le Carillon de Dunker"?
It would hardly surprise us, as this quaint place seems a century or so
behind the times.
We wish we could stop for an hour or two to watch them; but trains wait
for no man, and we must return to Digby and there take steamer for St.
John.
That short passage of twelve leagues has been our bugbear for some days,
as travelers whom we met at Annapolis pictured its horrors so vividly,
representing its atrocities as exceeding those of the notorious English
Channel. Yet we glide as smoothly through the eddies and whirlpools of
the beautiful Gap as a Sound steamer passes through Hell Gate. This
remarkable passage way is two miles in length; the mountains rise on
either hand to the height of five hundred and sixty and six hundred and
ten feet, the tide between rushing at the rate of five knots an hour.
We note gray, water worn rocks at the sides, resembling pumice in
appearance, though of course very much harder stone, and evidently of
similar formation to that of the ovens at Mt. Desert. And now we sweep
quietly out into the dreaded Bay of Fundy, the water of which rests in
such oily quietude as even Long Island Sound rarely shows. On this hazy,
lazy, sunny afternoon not a swell is perceptible (unless some among the
passengers might be designated by that title); and after four and a half
hours of most dreamy navigation, we enter the harbor of St. John, where
the many tinted signal lights are reflected in the black water, and a
forest fire on a distant hill throws a lurid light over the scene.
When the tide turns, there can be seen frequently far out in the Bay a
distinct line in the water, - a line as sharply defined as that between
the Arve and Rhone at their junction near Geneva. It is when wind and
tide are at variance that the roughest water is encountered; and they
say that if one would avoid an unpleasant game of pitch and toss, the
passage across should not be attempted during or immediately after a
blow from the northwest or southeast.
